Definitely different if the horse won't gain, think of the guidelines being for a healthy up-to-weight horse. Now double or triple this for a horse that needs to gain weight if you want to see quick, dramatic differences.

I hate it when people say how many flakes. I have some flakes that are a few inches thick and do not weigh much and I have other that are 6" thick and weigh more than 3 little ones. So you really need to go by weight and not the qty of flakes. And yes I would feed a skinny horse more.

Our mares have always been on grass/hay only (no feed) and they eat about 2.5% of their weight a day of high quality fescue/orchard (about 25 lbs for them @1000 lbs).
For an under weight horse, you want to give them free choice hay and let them eat all they want.

For maintaining weight horses need 2-3% of their body weight of a quality hay (have it analyzed to be sure you have enough of trace minerals, especially selenium) and will eat up to 4% of their body weight a day in dry matter. They can't physically eat more than that so if she needs to gain weight you will need to add a concentrate to put on pounds.

I have to agree with PaintHorseMares. Your rescue needs free access to hay. After it's weight gets back up to normal weight, you can drop the intake back to a normal of 1% to 3% of body weight depending on his/her activity level and the quality of the hay.

I also agree with Churumbeque that hay needs to be fed my the pound and not by the flake. You can weigh hay using a hanging scale with a tub on it. Adjust the scale to zero while the tub is hung from it. Then when you add hay, you'll get the weight of the hay alone. Most fish scales will work since they can go up to 30 lbs or so, and it would take an enormous horse to get fed 30 lbs of hay twice a day.

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